Akhos
by Corbeaun
Summary: Woe the day that Leda bore you, he says lowly, for you, oh daughter of Zeus, was not meant to be wife to mortal men. Helen and Hector.


From far up on the city walls, Helen looks on as Paris steps out from the ranks of the Trojan army and shakes his two bronze-shod spears in challenge at the Achaeans. Yet when her first husband Menelaus sprang with gleeful fury from his chariot to meet him, Paris skitters back to the safety of his stern-faced brother Hector and the Trojan host. Shamed but not surprised, Helen turns her face away.

She had thought him just a boy when Menelaus returned with Paris from the graves of Prometheus' sons. A golden-faced boy who had looked upon her as all men do, though he never stepped beyond their bounds of hospitality while Menelaus still remained at Sparta. Paris was extremely beautiful, possessed of all manners of charms and grace - he incited the appetite of almost all who saw him.

Helen's eyes first darkened with love for him because of a dog.

She had come upon him once, while he was a guest at her husband's house, cradling a hound fatally injured in the hunt. His long sure fingers had stroked the hound's coarse fur, matted as it was with blood and dirt, soothing the bitch's last pitiful whimpers till the very end. It was that gesture of tenderness she recalled later when her husband again sailed from Sparta and Paris stole into her chamber under the cover of night.

She had endured the feeble attempts of an aging Theseus while still a pubescent girl, and later as a young woman the brusque attentions of grim Menelaus. The two were great men, as men reckon them, hero and king both with songs glorifying their names for generations to come. Yet neither had given her a portion of the pleasure given her by an impetuous shepherd boy with dark eyes and gentle hands. Had not let her even think such pleasure possible.

She went mad then, poisoned by Eros' arrows. Forgot all obligations of honor and family. Helped Priam's son to the choicest of Menelaus' treasury before she stole herself away, she the brightest of her husband's treasures.

And when she finally came to herself again, it was to the sight of Achaean campfires dotting the plain before Troy like the stars on a clear, windless night.

Now, in the overcast noon sometime in the unrelenting ninth year, Helen stands upon the city walls with Priam and his Trojan women, looking on while Menelaus and Paris decide in single combat the fate of herself and her ill-begotten wealth. She watches as Paris casts aside his panther pelt, dons his brother's cuirass and sets on his head a shining helmet crested with nodding horsehair plumes. Radiant in armor and glorious in beauty, he looks as though he goes to a feast and not to battle. Grim, bearded Menelaus, coated with the white dust of Troy, strides to the empty space between the two hosts to meet golden Paris, this husband Helen had chosen for herself.

The battle is not long. Paris strikes first, but the shield of Menelaus turns the spear's point. At this, Menelaus grins madly and hurls his spear at Paris, tearing though shield and cuirass to pierce the fair flesh beneath. Only a sudden swerve saves Paris' life. Thwarted from an easy victory, Menelaus catches Paris' shining helmet by the plume and begins to drag the golden boy to the Achaeans. The strap of the helmet under the chin strangles the boy, and would thus make an ignominious end of him, but then the ox hide strap breaks and Menelaus is thrown back with an empty helmet in his hands. He tosses the helmet aside but lunges too late as Paris darts from the battlefield, vanishing into the Trojan throng. Menelaus bellows in frustrated rage, searching everywhere for Paris but not finding him.

Helen watches for a moment more. Then she wraps her veil about her and descends the wall in silence, unnoticed by Priam and his Trojan women.

0 0 0

That nightfall he finds her alone in her own room, weaving the battles between the Trojans and Achaeans that had been incited for her sake. She lets the shuttle fall when she sees who stands like a shade at the threshold.

"I have sent my handmaidens Aethra and Clymene away for the night," she tells him, rising from the seat before her loom. "And you would know better than I where to find my husband Paris."

Hector, tall and stern-faced, emerges from the shadows. "Paris refuses Menelaus the glory of keeping you," he tells her, "and even now he is at council with the elders and my father."

"He would have Troy fight still and violate the solemn covenant of peace?"

"Your husband," he says harshly, "would have us trample our oaths, the blood of lambs, the libations we poured before the gods. Some laughing goddess bred him to be the bane of Troy - would the earth open its maws and swallow him whole."

She turns away from Hector to look upon her nearly complete weaving. In it tiny armored figures clashed beneath the bright eyes of the Olympians. "The will of the gods it may be," she murmurs, almost to herself, "but would I had chosen a better man - one that would smart at the dishonor of being an oath-breaker. But no. Better I had chosen death ere bringing such sorrow and ruin to this great city." She fingers the unfinished weave unhappily. "Yet it seems we are doomed to be a theme of song among those who would come after."

"It is futile to struggle against fate," Hector responds gruffly. "The lot of men is to die and pass as whimpering shades to the cold house of Hades, leaving all warmth and vigor of life behind. Even cities die," he adds. "Only heroes attain immortality though memory."

Helen laughs and turns to look him in the eye. "Call me a hero, do you brother?" She gestures behind her at the vast unfinished weaving on the loom, a nine-year long lament for fallen warriors. "Gentle Andromache embroiders flowers for her lord, and I - I weave the blood and filth of war. Would that no such weaving is needed. No, brother, no hero I, though I shall be as an ignominious byword among those yet born." She smiles bleakly. "Immortality of a different sort."

Upon this, Hector, who in all the years that Helen was in Troy had not said a word of cruelty to her, is silent.

"Why came you here?" she asks finally.

He is silent for a moment more, then speaks suddenly, "The old men in the city, upon seeing you, say to one another: 'Small wonder that armored Trojans and Achaeans should so long have suffered the agonies of war for a woman so lovely and divine.'

"And yet, it was I who incited my brother to challenge Menelaus in combat and thus seek an end to this war."

Helen holds her head high. "I thought as much. It did not have the markings of my fair-faced husband."

"My brother Helenus declares that the mighty city of Troy shall fall, along with Priam and all of Priam's people - it is the gods' decree."

"If so, it is impious to struggle against the will of the gods."

"Then the house of Priam is cursed," he declares forcefully, "for I am willfully impious and will have none of this divine will." But the weariness creased onto his face belies the arrogance of his words.

"I bear you no ill will." She pauses, then quietly continues, "Your wife mourns you in your own house though you still live, each day expecting the wailing from the walls that would make her little son fatherless and herself a widow."

Hector narrows his eyes and straightens from his stand by the door. "My wife," he replies sternly, "would have me stand upon Troy's tall walls and direct the Trojan host thus from behind, shirking the frontlines like a coward or a lover. If Troy must fall," he continues harshly, raising his chin, "better that I be dead and weighted down with stones than see the proud walls of Troy tumble to the ground."

Helen fixed her eyes upon him. "Andromache is in all things a loving wife. The proud daughter of Eetion has suckled your bastard children at her breasts, so great is her love for you. Do not be cross with her. For a heroic death brings glory and immortality to the hero, but grief to his loved ones." Slowly, she draws close to Hector and touches her hands to his. "Persuade Paris and kindly Priam to give my foolish self back to the Achaeans," she tells him intently, "for they will listen not to me.

"And if," she adds softly, "it was my consent you desired, you needn't even ask."

With darkened eyes on her face, Hector takes her hands in his briefly, then lets go.

"Woe the day that Leda bore you," he says lowly, "for you, oh daughter of Zeus, was not meant to be wife to mortal men," and saying thus, leaves Helen to the solitude of her loom.

0 0 0

But too soon, the covenant of peace is broken by a Trojan arrow.

"The mighty city of Troy shall fall," Hector tells her curtly before again leaving for the battlefields, "- it is the will of the gods." And Helen sees now in his face that he believes.

She does not climb the walls of Troy to watch him leave at the head of the Trojan host. Instead she retakes the shuttle in her hand, her weaving now almost complete.

* * *

_end _

Written for Iseult Variante in the Yuletide 2005 Challenge


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